The present invention relates to an image forming system and a book-binding apparatus.
An image forming apparatus having electronic photographing method has been utilized in a field of short-run printing such as POD (Print On Demand) by using its high-speed performance.
In the field of short-run printing, as an embodiment of image forming apparatus, there is disclosed image forming systems in Patent Documents 1 to 3 to execute a job from printing to book-binding in a single process by combining an image forming apparatus and a book-binding apparatus.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Open to Public Inspection No. Tokkaihei 8-225196
Patent Document 2: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Open to Public Inspection No. Tokkaihei 9-77310
Patent Document 3: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Open to Public Inspection No. Tokkaihei 11-208939
In the book-binding apparatuses of Patent Documents 1 to 3, sheets conveyed from an image forming apparatus one by one are bundled to form a sheet bundle composed of a plurality of the sheets and glue is applied on a spine of the sheet bundle to form a booklet.
Different form ordinary book-binding apparatuses which carry out book-binding in a process separated from printing process, this type of book-binding apparatus is designed to be compact since it is used in combination with the image forming apparatus and an process amount of booklets is relatively small.
With the above reasons, the book-binding apparatuses of Patent Documents 1 to 3 also have a configuration in which a glue application section to apply the glue on the sheet moves along a spine to apply glue, which makes it possible to downsize an apparatus.
In such compact book-binding apparatus, a reception vessel to receive the glue to be applied is also compact, consequently the glue has to be refilled relatively frequently. Meanwhile, as the glue used for the aforesaid compact book-binding apparatus, because handling is relatively easy, hot melt glue which melts by heat is used. In case a glue composed of hot melt adhesive is used, a raw material of the glue in solid pellet form is received in a hopper once then the pellets are refilled from the hopper to the reception vessel in sequence and then the pellets are heated and melt to liquid glue to be applied.
Now, there is a case that a temperature of the glue decreases right after the pellets are refilled and a temperature distribution of the glue in the reception vessel becomes uneven, then if the glue is applied right after the pellets are refilled, the glue is applied unevenly and uniform application of the glue cannot be realized. In the aforesaid image forming system utilizing the small reception vessel, refilling of the raw material of the glue is carried out frequently and a problem such as uneven application has to be solved.